The latest studio release from metal legends Iron Maiden, Senjutsu, has been out less than a week, and already it’s on the tip of every metalhead’s tongue. The band kicked the album cycle off with a massive, cinematic animated music video for the track “The Writing On The Wall.” Now, the band have released another animated video, this time for the single “Stratego,” and man, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Part of what made “The Writing On The Wall” such an amazing first video from Senjutsu was how much it fit into the Iron Maiden lore and worldview. Biker Eddies taking down a massive, shallow party packed with the world’s most useless assholes? Sounds like a killer Derek Riggs painting to us! But “Stratego” turns the song into a Japanese fable of sorts, in which two warriors representing both the forces of darkness and the armies of light are constantly doing battle, with a lone human in the middle of it all, being murdered over and over, and…turned into scarier dragons after each death? Hey, we’re not saying we understand it, only that it looks incredibly badass in this video.
Check out “Stratego” below, and then maybe do it again on drugs:
Apparently, Maiden got their idea for “The Writing On The Wall” from a somewhat surprising source: German industrial metallers Rammstein. In a recent interview, frontman Bruce Dickinson said, “I said to Rod [Smallwood, Maiden manager], ‘Have you seen the video for ‘Deutschland’ by Rammstein?’ That, to me, is a groundbreaking video. That’s astonishing. Now, I’m not suggesting we do that, because we’re not Rammstein. But think of what we could do that would have the equivalent impact for us. So, I wrote storyboard for the vid, tweaked it a little bit, and gave it a happy ending.
“Well, kind of a happy ending – Adam and Eve start again, but with Eddie going, ‘I’ll still get you in the end.’”
Check out Iron Maiden’s video for “The Writing On The Wall” below:
***
Words by Chris Krovatin
